This collective repatriation operation, the first of 2023, confirms the rupture already started in 2022 in Paris with the policy of the “case by case”.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
France repatriated, Tuesday, January 24, fifteen women and thirty-two children who were detained in the jihadist prison camps in northeast Syria, announced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The minors have been given to the services responsible for childhood assistance and will be the subject of medico-social follow-up,” the Quai d’Orsay said in a press release. “Adults have been given to the competent judicial authorities,” he added.
This collective repatriation operation, the first of 2023, confirms the rupture already started in 2022 in Paris with the policy of the “case by case”, which earned it to be condemned by international and blamed bodies by French advisory organizations.
change of doctrine
On October 20, 2022, fifteen jihadist women and forty French children detained in camps in northeast Syria had already been repatriated by the French authorities. It was the most important operation of this type carried out by France to date. The previous one, who had concerned sixteen women and thirty-five minors, on July 5, 2022, had marked a major turning point and a change of doctrine: after more than three years of blockage, Paris had decided to repatriate all of its nationals and of their children detained since the final fall of the pseudo “caliphate” of the Islamic State organization (IS), in March 2019 in Baghouz.
Until the summer of 2022, France favored repatriation to the “case by case”, which consists, de facto, to bring back to the national soil of children without their mothers, that is to say either orphans, children whose mothers had agreed to sign a document for renouncing their parental rights. Only thirty-five alleged orphaned children had thus been repatriated by Paris, including the latter in January 2021.
Among European countries, France was increasingly isolated in its choice of repatriation “on a case -by -case basis”. Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany have decided to repatriate all of their minor nationals, in the company of their mothers when possible. The reversal of the Elysée was also motivated by the multiplication of convictions by international bodies.